Neapolitan School, Pompeii Mosaic: Cockfighting – early C19th gouache painting

Neapolitan School Pompeii Mosaic: Cockfighting Scene

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View the full Collection: Souvenir of Naples: Early-19th-century Paintings Drawings & Prints

An original early 19th-century gouache painting, Neapolitan School, Pompeii Mosaic: Cockfighting Scene.

A gorgeously vivid Neapolitan School painting in opaque gouache, collected by a British traveller in the early-to-mid-19th century. The painting reproduces a mosaic at Pompeii featuring a cockfight, with the defeated cock and owner to the right and the victorious at the left—the owner offering a laurel wreath to the statue of Priapus and the boy with a palm of victory.

Archaeological excavation work had begun at the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum around 1758, unearthing the Roman art that had laid buried since the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79 AD. There was great popular interest in the new discoveries, and paintings by local artists served as souvenirs for Grand Tour travellers before the age of photography. Such images also proved influential on the work of neoclassical architects and decorative art designers.

Due to its preservation in an album, the colours and paint surface remain arrestingly vivid and crisp.

On thin wove paper laid down on original album backing paper.

Souvenir of Naples: Early-19th-century Paintings, Drawings & Prints

This picture forms part of a superb group of works that were collected by a British Grand Tour traveller in Naples in the mid-19th century. The collection includes impressive Neapolitan School gouache vedute depicting iconic local sites, and also meticulous renderings of the decorative frescoes at Pompeii. There are also a number of hand-coloured lithographs by Gaetano Dura, who specialised in popular prints describing the every-day life of Naples. In addition to works by local artists, the collection features a small number of topographical pictures by British hands.

Naples and Pompeii were often the southerly apotheosis of a European Grand Tour—it being relatively easy to arrange transport on a British ship back to England from Naples. The events at Pompeii and the smoking silhouette of Vesuvius that dominated the Bay of Naples were a unique draw for the traveller and the Romantic imagination. In contrast to the civic sites at Rome—all testaments to imperial power—the monuments at Pompeii were testaments to everyday life and the volcanic power of Vesuvius inspired personal awe and horror. The resulting experience for the traveller was therefore one of heightened authenticity and emotion. Such an experience warranted unique mementoes, and souvenirs were voraciously collected by the Victorian traveller. Pictorial representations of the key sites painted by local artists, to be taken home and shared with others, served as concrete reminders of this emotional engagement.